Grumbling

Sometimes he just grumbles at the sight of new food. 
Then, you pop it in his mouth when he's crying and wow -- ice cream
really is good!

Scripture:

Luke 15:1   Now all the tax collectors and sinners were coming near to listen to him. ² And the Pharisees and the scribes were grumbling and saying, “This fellow welcomes sinners and eats with them.”

Observation:

The people coming near to Jesus were those whom the religious officials found repulsive. Tax collectors were some of the worst because of the ways that they served the Roman government and stole from their own people. This was treasonous behavior for those who should have been loyal to God’s people. Sinners were just sinners in general — not as bad as the tax collectors! 

The religious leaders were muttering and grumbling. The word used here is the same one used in Exodus where the Israelites grumble against the leadership of Moses and Aaron in the desert. “The Pharisees are like the grumbling Israelites who would not recognize the leadership of God’s prophet” (Neale, NBBC).

Neale continues: 

But there is a deeper significance. Salvation based on being lost and found challenges the concept of election. If God’s supposedly chosen people cannot rely on their election, they must also repent and be weighed in the scales of judgment alongside the nations/Gentiles. Jesus’ general welcome to the sinners deconstructs the theological paradigm of ethnic election and its understanding of holiness as marked separation between the saved and the condemned. (NBBC)

Application:

There are times that we look upon people with judgement, wondering who they are and what decisions they’ve made to get them to this point in their lives. Maybe we don’t believe that we are the elect, like the Pharisees and scribes did, but then again, maybe we act as if we are. Those who have been raised in the church and see it as “theirs” have a hard time letting go and seeing the mission of Jesus from a broader perspective. At times, we want the church to be a nice and safe place for Christian young people, and we don’t want it to be touched by the people of the world. Suddenly, we find ourselves in the very same place, as people who are judging those who might minister in Jesus’ name with those whom we consider sinners!

Our first place of formal ministry was in St. Louis, back in the 1980’s. The church where we served had a long history within the city, and at one time, had reached more than 1000 members. By the 1980’s it was struggling. Most of the parishioners had moved out into the suburbs and were driving into town to attend. The surrounding neighborhood had deteriorated, crime was on the rise, and hardly anyone from the community attended the church. There were several saintly folks who had come to Christ through the bus ministry of the church. They saw children within the community that reminded them of themselves and they wanted to minister to them — and keep the buses running. 

What happened was that the people who drove in from the suburbs didn’t like their kids mixing with the ones from the inner city. The inner city children had “behavior problems” and were a challenge. We actually discovered that many of them were hungry, and if they had full bellies, they would do much better throughout the day. To minister to these children we thought we could have a more “wholistic” approach by having them come on Saturdays where we could feed them, provide a type of teaching that was much more interactive and engaging than sitting in a class on Sunday morning. Suddenly, there was a great uproar in the church — you can’t have “Sunday school” on Saturdays! There was a lot of grumbling — because without knowing it, the elect wanted things to be for them. They were in essence saying “you want to adjust the ministry of the church for tax collectors and sinners!” 

Jesus was teaching his disciples about what it meant to stay on mission. Seeking and saving the lost is the mission. It’s so easy to murmur like the Israelites in the desert. We don’t always enjoy the circumstances in which we find ourselves, but this isn’t about us! We give ourselves to a cause greater than ourselves, and that is, our lives in service to Christ. When that happens, we discover that we are not distracted from the religious, but find a way to stay on Jesus’ mission, reaching the marginalized for Christ. 

Prayer:

Lord, may your mission be the priority. I confess that sometimes it’s easy to grumble, even about little things. Please, help me to keep my eye fixed on you and where you are leading. Amen.